‘Perseus.’ I was desperate to reassure him.
‘I was hidden, Merina. My existence was denied by everyone except my mother.’
‘I know how that feels, I promise.’
‘And then disaster struck, as disaster always does. My grandpa found out about me, because my mother kept asking the kitchen for extra portions of date cake and the cook got fed up with the constant demands. Grandpa investigated, and discovered a small baby in the tower. Me.’
‘What happened?’
‘He didn’t kill us, for fear of angering Zeus. Instead he chucked us in a wooden chest and pushed us out to sea.’
‘So both of us were babies who understood the water,’ I said. ‘Yet another thing we have in common.’
I was clinging to these commonalities, fearing how soon my snakes might wrench us apart.
‘Right,’ said Perseus. ‘But we got caught in a huge storm. It was wild, Merina. Wild. Me, peering over the side of the chest, poor Mum in the middle of it trying to cling on to me, wondering how by Hades we were going to survive.’
‘No doubt adding Zeus to her list of men to curse.’
‘Exactly!’ Perseus laughed.
It was better when we were telling the tale together. We were back on solid ground. I’d never, ever known such symphony.
‘And how did you survive?’ I asked.
‘We got lucky. Poseidon saved us.’
A twitch on my snakes, a desire to scream, and just like that, my sense of safety shattered. The music we’d been making fizzled in the face of the one commonality I did not desire. To hear that god’s name from Perseus’s mouth made my stomach ache. My snakes rose up and began to hiss, fangs bared, writhing in fury. I edged away from the entrance arch so he couldn’t hear them.
‘What’s going on back there?’ Perseus said. ‘Merina, are you all right? Shall I come in?’
I heard him rising to his feet. ‘No!’ I said. ‘No!’
‘Merina, please. Let me come in.’
‘It’s nothing.’
I grabbed all my snakes in one hand and squeezed their heads to shut them up. I understood their fury: it was the same as mine. ‘Just my cauldron coming to the boil!’ I shouted. ‘Just some water splashed on to the rocks!’
‘All right.’ The hissing had stopped, but Perseus didn’t sound convinced. ‘But if you need any help—’
‘Please,’ I said, letting the snakes go limp and wiping the tears from my eyes, Poseidon’s name slithering through my mind on a loop. ‘Perseus, for both of us, just stay where you are.’
For now, he obeyed, but I could taste his confusion on the air. I wanted so much to tell him the truth, to show him these snakes, to tell him my story. But I didn’t know how. We sat in silence either side of the rock – a silence more awkward and spiky, more painful even, than when my snakes were angry.
I closed my eyes. Poseidon, someone I hated so much, doing something loving for another soul? It was agony. Of all the gods to help Dana?, why did it have to be him? A mother and her child soon to die in a storm, bobbing around in a wooden chest. So Poseidon, bountiful god of the sea, rescues her. How kind of him.
But here’s the thing: without Poseidon, there’d be no Perseus on my island. This truth was unavoidable. I could hardly bear its paradox. I pictured a familiar wall of water, my own little boat, Poseidon’s looming, leering face, his shadow in Athena’s temple. What happened after –
I shook my head – No, no, I would not let those memories win. But the more this boy was in my company, the more these broken moments came to me. Even though he was on the other side of the rock, I could feel his presence pulling my story out of me on a blood-coloured thread.
‘It’s inexplicable,’ I said. ‘To whom the gods are fair and foul.’
Perseus sighed. I stirred, smoothing down the scales of my snakes. It was fine, everything was fine. ‘So what happened to you, Perseus, after Pos— after the sea was calmed?’
‘A fisherman found us,’ said Perseus. ‘He pulled the wooden chest in from the water. Dry land! Mum says she clutched me to her chest and kissed the earth like a long-lost lover. We’d washed up in a place called Seriphos.’
‘Seriphos?’
‘Just a city. Markets, palaces. A few fields round the outside, and then the sea.’
‘What sort of palaces?’
‘Oh, you know. Palaces.’
I didn’t know. Of course I didn’t know. I lived in a cave. ‘I haven’t seen many palaces in my time,’ I said.
‘Well, it was better than bobbing around in a wooden chest, I’ll say that.’
Perseus didn’t seem to want to talk about the Seriphos chapter of his life very much, but I was determined to wheedle it out of him. Then I heard it: the beating of my sisters’ wings.
‘What’s that noise?’ he said.
‘Listen to me, Perseus,’ I said. ‘A storm’s coming. You need to go to your cave.’
‘But—’
‘Perseus. Do you trust me?’
‘Yes,’ he said, sounding almost surprised.
I hugged myself, my snakes undulating in rhythm with my happiness. ‘Then go. And take Orado with you.’
Perseus concealed himself just in time. Within minutes, Stheno and Euryale hove into view from across the purpling sea, their wings magnificent against the dusk.
‘Hello, darling,’ Stheno said, landing neatly and folding her wings between her shoulder blades. ‘Brought you an octopus.’
She untangled its eight tentacles before laying it in a cool corner of the cave. When I didn’t reply, she looked at me with concern. ‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing’s up. I’m fine.’
Euryale stalked towards me, hands on hips. She looked over at my snakes; Echo, in particular, appeared to be in a state of bliss. ‘You seem different, Med,’ my sister said. ‘Changed.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘I think I’ve been changed enough, don’t you?’
‘Takes a Gorgon to know it,’ said Euryale.
‘Don’t use that word,’ said Stheno, flashing a warning look at her.
‘It’s not a dirty word,’ said Euryale. ‘What’s happened today?’ she persisted.
‘Oh, you two,’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’
My sisters were right, of course. I was changed, except this time, thankfully, it was a change you couldn’t see.
I thought about Perseus up in the cave. Talking with him had been so easy. He was my secret. I’d never had a secret, least of all one I kept hidden from my sisters, who’d done everything in their power to protect me after life had gone wrong.
Actually, I didn’t relish having a secret from my sisters. The fact of it was like a crack in the earth between us. A hairline crack, but a fissure all the same: Stheno and Euryale on one side, me alone on the other.
I pictured Perseus’s sword, discarded on the deck, hiding in the shadows of the inlet. A son of Zeus, would he still be as warm once the sun had gone? There was still so much to discover and I might never know any of it. These few hours with him, even though we were sitting either side of a gigantic rock, had been like opening a book full of powerful words – words that I had never thought would be mine to hear, but which turned out to have been written just for me.
I knew it was not a book I was prepared to close.
I managed a passable impression of serenity over the octopus that night, my sisters and me sitting round the fire, with Argentus occasionally whimpering. He lifted his head every now and then in the direction of Perseus’s hideout.
‘What’s wrong with that dog?’ said Stheno.
‘Old age,’ I said. ‘Thinks he’s seeing ghosts.’
Love had been a ghost for so long. Until that day, I could have walked through it and not even noticed it was there. As my sisters slept by the dying fire, I closed my eyes and let the embers dance inside my lids. I thought of what it might mean to have a boy admire you, not for how you looked, but for who you were. For your thoughts and your deeds, your fears and your dreams. Was such a miracle to be my inheritance?